The Oklahoma Medical Examiner board offers the job of Chief Medical Examiner to Doctor Eric Pfeifer. At the board's meeting on the OU-Tulsa campus on Monday the decision was made to hire the Minnesota doctor. The position pays $225,000 a year.

The chairman of the board said he hopes hiring Doctor Pfeifer will bring an end to over a year of controversy in the department.  The new chief will have to deal with a troubling backlog of cases which has drawn flack from prosecutors across Oklahoma.

The action fills the post left vacant when Doctor Collie Trant was fired from the Chief Medical Examiner's post just nine months after he was hired. Trant has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get the job back. Trant claimed in the lawsuit that he was fired for trying to report wrongdoing in the department.